Ep. 654 Daily Ayurvedic Self-Care with Dr. Shivani Gupta

Cynthia Thurlow (0:00)

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Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, nurse practitioner, Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower, and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.

Today is the second podcast episode with Dr. Shivani Gupta. As I mentioned previously, she has both a master's and PhD in Ayurvedic Sciences. She's also the founder and CEO of Fusionary Formulas and the author of the Inflammation Code. Today, we continued our conversation around the science of curcumin and how it specifically impacts not only brain health, but also our mitochondria. We unpack Ayurvedic medicine and daily rituals, body types and the five elements, and how these interplay with how we navigate our lives. And we spent an extensive amount of time talking about finding lifestyle balance in midlife and specific rituals that she has found to be highly impactful for midlife women. Again, a truly invaluable conversation, one I'm sure you will listen to more than once. How much tumor or curcumin do they need to take on a daily basis to buffer inflammation? Because I'm sure that's probably some of the question is maybe someone's listening that is doing all the right things. They're eating an anti-inflammatory diet, plus or minus they're on HRT.

They're avoiding sugar. They're doing a lot of the right things. And if they're open to adding a supplement, what does the research suggest? Like, is it 500 milligrams? I'm not sure I'm asking you, but.

Shivani Gupta (2:18)

Yes. So the research suggests 500 to 1000 milligrams a day. You were exactly right.

Cynthia Thurlow (2:23)

I just always tell my patients, listen, or my students, I was like, when all else fails, say 500 milligrams or a gram. Generally, you're right.

Shivani Gupta (2:31)

Yes. Usually you're right. And it really comes down to potency. What I learned was how we build supplements in the supplement world. And you know this, there are supplements built for functional medicine doctors and integrative practitioners to use in their practices. And those practitioners know what works and what doesn't.

And so when I finished my PhD, everyone's like, can you please make a turmeric that we can trust? And I said, that's insane to build an entire supplement company. But I thought to myself, if I do that and put it into the hands of orthopedics, the toughest door, and show them that turmeric can be a good adjunct support to what they're doing, we could really change the game. Because when I used to go to orthopedics with my plantar fasciitis and my knee pain and my shoulder pain after having kids, I would just be told, take NSAIDs for 10 days, you'll be fine.

And that didn't work for me, I would get stomach aches.

Cynthia Thurlow (3:20)

Yeah, you get the gastritis.

Shivani Gupta (3:22)

That's where I thought, okay, if we start using turmeric in this very potent targeted way, where we take those curcumin ois and we match mother nature's proportion, and we push above the 95% standard, then we're really talking here about a solution. And I actually worked at MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston in the lab, where the scientists discovered the impact of turmeric on NF-kappa-B, and they were doing so much research on the black pepper piece of it. So that's why I'm such a fan of always, always, everyone who's going to cook with turmeric, add the black pepper and the healthy fat to get those added benefits.

Cynthia Thurlow (3:57)

It's exciting because you start to realize, like, this is what explains why VC tumor with piperine, which is black pepper, explains that it's helping to kind of potentiate across the lumen of the small intestine.

Now, if we're thinking about mitochondria and tumeric, does the research suggest that it's beneficial? Can it actually get intracellularly?

Shivani Gupta (4:19)

Yes. So I read a study, I was reading so much science to prepare for you, Cynthia, because I was like, Cynthia loves to get deep in the science. So we know that curcumin causes mitogenesis, helps create new mitochondria in the body.

We know that curcumin can impact NF-kappa B activation. We know that it impacts TNF-alpha, interleukin-6, interleukin-1-beta.